I’d made up my mind about Dreamworks Animation quite some time ago. Basically, they appeared to me as a company that zigs where Pixar chooses to zag, generally ending up the poorer for it. Where Pixar has seldom put out sequels to its work, Dreamworks seems to greenlight sequels to all of their films long before the originals have come out. Then there’s the matter of how the two companies cast their films. Dreamworks crammed Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett Smith, Sacha Baron Cohen, Cedric the Entertainer and Andy Richter — plus a Bob Saget cameo — into Madagascar alone! Compare that to Pixar, who swapped out Reese friggin’ Witherspoon for Kelly Macdonald as the lead in Brave, their offering for next year.

It seems like Pixar is in the business of trying to tell great stories, hiring the actors best suited a means toward that end. Dreamworks, meanwhile, appears to be solidly in the business of making money and does so partly by hiring as many A-list talents as will fit on a movie poster. To be fair, there are times when the latter approach works. Sometimes, we end up with Shrek, which smartly utilized a leading cast of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy (remember when those two were popular, back in the late ’90s?), Cameron Diaz and John Lithgow. At other times, Dreamworks ends up releasing increasingly tired sequels (again, Shrek) or transparent Pixar cash-ins (Antz, Shark Tale).

Then again, Kung Fu Panda.

Even without the Dreamworks pedigree, there were quite a few reasons why I wanted to avoid seeing this movie. Easily the most prominent are the stupid title, the tired premise and the lead actor. There was actually a time when I really wanted to like Jack Black, but I lost patience with him very quickly. His constant mugging for the camera got annoying and his hyperactive brand of humor just gets on my nerves. It’s one thing when the script and direction are tight enough to keep him focused — as in School of Rock or King Kong — but when Black is allowed to do his own thing… AAARGH!

Sure enough, there are several moments when Black is allowed to ramble incoherently and clown around while voicing Po the overweight panda. He’s genuinely good at depicting the character’s heart when he stays on point, but when Po goes on for long stretches of time, he’s just intolerable. Fortunately — as one might expect — Dreamworks saw fit to populate this film with such talents as Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Ian McShane, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogen, Lucy Liu, David Cross and Michael Clarke Duncan. I know I complained earlier about how Dreamworks uses celebrities to such excess, but in this case, more A-listers means less Jack Black. That’s something I can appreciate.

It’s Dustin Hoffman who easily gets the best deal out of the secondary cast, given the time and the dialogue to craft a vulnerable yet kick-ass sensei with an amazing development arc all his own. Ian McShane is close behind, adding a surprising amount of depth to the villainous Tai Lung with relatively little screen time. The rest of the secondary cast — those in the elite “Furious Five” kung fu team — get a much more raw deal. Their respective actors put in more than enough effort, yet they didn’t get enough dialogue to really develop these characters aside from one or two superficial traits apiece. Yes, we know that they’re awesome, but that’s more due to the animation than the voice acting (oh, I’ll be getting to the animation later, just wait). I could really feel like there was more to these characters in the Furious Five, yet their development arcs felt truncated.

Really, the screenplay was disappointing all-around. I know that this is a kids’ movie, but this screenplay is trying waaay too hard to appeal to the elementary school ADD set. The jokes are very juvenile and huge chunks of dialogue might have been culled from internet memes, neither of which help when they’re being delivered by Jack Black. I seriously felt ashamed of myself for listening to the ridiculously stupid opening narration. Plus, the timeline to this film made no sense at all. I mean, Tai Lung — who’s already been established as an insanely skilled, super-fast ninja — takes that freaking long to go from a prison to a dojo? I might have believed that if there was enough distance between the two, but not if a wounded and half-dead bird could make the same trip in only a fraction of the time! TWICE! Add in some extremely blunt moralizing and an entirely predictable narrative, and there’s just no denying that this screenplay isn’t up to scratch. But those visuals… wow.

Despite a few uncomfortably repetitive character designs, this animation ROCKS. The characters are very expressive, every hair of fur looks uncannily lifelike, the cinematography and editing are both gorgeous and the characters’ movements are all gracefully fluid. This latter point is especially obvious during the fight scenes, which are highly energetic and uniformly spectacular. The fights in this movie are extremely clever in their choreography and surprisingly brutal in their execution, but never in a way that scars. A few of the better fight scenes, such as Po’s climactic encounter with Tai Lung or the ingenious dumpling fight at the end of the second act, are infused with comedy in a way that’s extremely novel and satisfying.

It’s not very often that such a patently mediocre screenplay is so visibly salvaged by phenomenal direction, but that’s exactly what happened with Kung Fu Panda. Whatever problems I might have with Jack Black are outweighed by the rest of his wonderful co-stars and all the narrative deficiencies are (slightly) redeemed by the skilled and creative visuals. I’m hesitant to use “because it’s a kids’ movie” as an excuse for weak storytelling, but this movie clearly put in so much effort to be a great kids’ movie — as opposed to a great family movie as Pixar would have done — that I can’t take away too many points for it.

All told, it’s a movie that’s flawed but still enjoyable. Bring on the sequel.